Cock-Sucker Tales: 'Hellfire Club'

COCK-SUCKER TALES: 'THE DISTURBING CASE OF THE HELLFIRE CLUB'

In which the great Victorian Detective is forced to confront

the dilemma of his own sexual identity...

This strange tale has a curious history. In their exhaustive study Drs Ben Doone and Phil McCavity, Professors of Literature with a special interest in works of a Deviant, Transgressive and Proscribed nature, deconstructed its syntax, examined its provenance, and declared it a cunning and well-contrived fake. In making it available here we make no comment or judgement, but leave that for those discerning readers who choose to enter its disturbing and unsettling world...

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The lamplighter is moving down Baker Street, igniting a series of trapped fireflies as he goes. I watch him pacing, as a purposeful distraction from more productive pursuits. Until he moves out of sight. I draw the curtain back and return to my desk. This is a tale unlike all other tales I have chronicled. A story for which the world is not yet prepared, yet place it on record I must, even though none may read it, even though it will never find a place on the pages of the 'Strand' magazine. Yet it begins, as our other exploits begin, with the street door creaking on its hinges, and a visitor's heavy footfall shaking the seventeen stairs as he ascends the wooden staircase.

A new client, an unpleasantly fawning little man, to whom I take an instinctive dislike. But he has a proposition. A case. A youth has been abducted from his place of employment. A bond-servant held in trust by the client. Naturally my own role was merely to observe. But in that capacity I was nonetheless well-positioned to draw certain conclusions of my own. I resented this man's intrusion into our otherwise ordered lives. To 'like' or 'dislike' are irrational responses, I concede. Logic, analysis, the process of deductive reasoning must be the prerequisites of detection. Yet I persist in considering intuition as something of no small value. But I could tell that 'the great detective' was already intrigued, and that as from this moment a new game was afoot. And, as always, I take no keener pleasure than in following my friend in his professional investigations into this, another scandal of bohemians.

Our enquiries took us to the property at which the youth was last known to have been leased on a temporary assignment. A swift hansom cab conveyed us. A fine tree-darkened house standing in its own grounds. The long drive thick with fallen leaves. It at first appeared deserted, until a man-servant responded to our persistent knocking, and grudgingly admits us. He explained that he was the only member of the household staff remaining. Retained to maintain the property in good order until its occupant should return. But no, he had no certain knowledge of their present location. There seemed no reason to suspect he was telling anything other than the truth. He offered no objection to our further exploration, indeed, he seemed particularly anxious to return to whatever activity had been occupying him prior to our arrival. From which we had distracted him.

My companion stalked in a state of some preoccupation through darkened rooms where furniture was shrouded like menacing shapes of indeterminate dimensions, pausing here and there to examine whatever attracted his attention. As usual I follow, perplexed by the complicated deductive process his thought-patterns assume. This, then, is the gentleman I am pleased to address as my friend. Picture if you will this tall, thin man in excellent health. His long thin nose as sharp as a knife, yet no sharper than his keenest of intellects. I sometimes suspect he uses so noble a proboscis to detect the various odours of misdemeanour, but such speculation must be considered sheer calumny. He prefers to use it for cocaine, and that in no small measure!

The library. He uncovers a chair, carefully folding its shroud once, twice, three times, and placing it precisely on an adjacent writing desk. He sits down contemplatively, indicating me to silence. His eyes track rows of bound volumes in their ordered cases. An even layer of dust stipples the books, as there is dust everywhere. At length he stands, selects a number of specific books.

'You will observe, my dear Doctor, that amongst all of the works here, these are consistent in that the dust accumulated upon them is of a lesser density than their fellows. Hence these must be the final volumes consulted by our absent friend immediately prior to his abrupt and unexplained departure. Taking with him the abducted youth.' He returned to the chair, placing the books upon the bureau adjacent to the folded shroud. Examining the titles in turn by flattening them open upon his knee. He carries economy of movement to the point of avarice.

'Observe, all we seek to learn of the quarry is here' he sniffed sardonically. 'The history and antiquities of the Venetian Republic. The art and architecture of Paris. The geography of the Italian lakes. I feel certain that as he was reading these books, he was researching the journey he was planning to undertake. The journey we must now take...' When scientific deduction has spoken, it behoves us to be silent.

Suffice to say that following the leads he had deduced in this way, we charted our travels across Europe. We made enquiries at ticket offices. Departure points. Railway stations. We identified hotels where the fleeing party had stayed for a weekend, for a week, seldom longer. Three of them answering the descriptions we carried. A distinguished gentleman of middle-aged appearance. A dark-haired quiet youth who avoided attention. And a bustling maternal maid-servant. We traced their presence to a left-bank rooming house overlooking the Seine, strolled the same arrondisments as they had, and imitated their leaving from the 'Gare de l'Est'. To a white hotel on the shores of Lake Garda. And ultimately, to Venice. A haunted city of beautiful ghosts.

It was about four in the afternoon as we disembarked at the Piazza San Marco. Clouds passed slowly on a day neither too mellow nor too tart, too hot nor too cool. The air sweeter for our presence. Once booked into the faded grandeur of a hotel opening out onto a view of the Ponte de Rialto we resumed our investigations, but upon returning that same evening the desk-clerk made himself known to us and informed us that an envelope had been left for us to collect. Thanking him we hastened the bulky package to the privacy of our suite where the Great Detective sat, drew his calabash pipe and commenced to smoke, while instructing me to read the contents. He had his back to the windows leading out onto the balcony, in an agreeable gloom thrown into sharp contrast by being framed against the deep blood of the setting sun, as I extracted sheets of closely-written manuscript, coughed to clear my throat, and commenced to read...

'My name is ----, and I am guilty of perpetrating the most vile abominations against the good ordinances of society, and against nature itself. I seek neither absolution, nor your pity, and herewith surrender myself to your custody to do with as you feel is right and proper. The location of my current abode is here affixed, where I await with both trepidation, and a sense of acceptance. I knew you would be coming to seek me out, I anticipated your arrival. Now, the wait is over. It is done.

Previous to my present situation I have lived a quiet and solitary life, always aware that to do otherwise would expose and leave me vulnerable to the baser instincts of my kind. I have devils in me, I'm wary of granting them license. I have a terror of infection, disease, lack of hygiene... loss of control. Contenting myself with botanical studies and certain scientific pursuits which are of no great relevance here, but which preoccupied me for many years. It was only with the steady procession of years and with it, the sense that something was being irretrievably lost, that I responded to the importunities of my cousin to engage, grudgingly, in interactions of a more social nature.

He has always been more outgoing than I, and mercilessly lampooned me for my fusty hermit-like existence, until I began to suspect that there was perhaps a grain of truth in his bantering accusations. Life in all its splendid variety was eluding me. I spent several uneasy evenings in his company, under his tutelage, accompanying him to the raucous music halls where the throng seemed to me both uncivil and malodorous, smoking clubs where the conversation was banal and distasteful to me, and finally he promised me a visit to what he termed 'The Hellfire Club' devoted to the extreme pleasures of the flesh, physical gratification and gluttony, where the abiding rule is 'do what thou wilt shall be the law.'

I was more than a little apprehensive as the hour approached. But as I was picked up by the 'Dark Master' himself, and we travelled together across the Heath in his carriage, driven by his manservant, I had no opportunity to indulge in last-minute loss of nerves. I am naturally not at liberty to divulge the true identity of The Dark Master, except to say that we arrived early, together, at the House of Ill-Repute where a room had been reserved, and I was privy to his making preparations for the evening's event. He strode impatiently across the room, unclipped his cape, and threw it aside.

'Four strapping specimens. And I need them now.'

'Certainly sir' fawned the brothel-keeper, washing his hands together, 'black or white, cut or uncut?'

He waved dismissively, 'no matter, a mix of either, just have them delivered here.'

'It shall be as you say.' He vanished. The Dark Master walked up and down. It was not, in truth, a large room, although attempts had been made to create an appearance of more space than there actually was, with drapes of green baize curtains. A roaring log fire at one end of the room which cast agreeable shadows and warm illumination across inauthentic décor intended to suggest a medieval banqueting hall, although closer scrutiny would have revealed a certain musty artificiality, a poor theatrical artifice assembled with little attention to accuracy of detail or context, and a gaudy taste for gothic excess.

Erotic tapestries of perverse activity be-hung the walls. There were table-places laid out for twenty members of the Hellfire Club -- although only a dozen would actually appear, and on each side -- as specified by the Dark Master, two low plinths were draped in red velvet. A crestfallen goat and an irritable caged cockerel in the corner set me to wondering with sinking heart what further satanic entertainments he had planned as the night's entertainments progressed.

'What time is it Thanatos?' He used the alias we had agreed upon.

I flipped open my waistcoat pocket-watch. 'Twenty minutes to midnight, Dark Master.'

He grunted. A knock. The door opened behind us and the disgusting keeper re-entered. 'If you please sirs...?' and he beckoned.

Four naked young men file in, one Nubian, all of them genitally shaved and impressively endowed. There's a surly dark-haired youth with a wicked foreskin and an arrogant appearance. And another, a slighter paler youth who hangs back but -- I can't help but notice, is the only one to be sexually aroused. I appraise his dark expressive, troubled eyes, and large soft mouth. And find myself smiling with a tremor of secret anticipation.

'What does sir have in mind?'

'What I want is for them to soixante-neuf on the plinths while we dine, as a kind of entertainment.'

'Of course. Perhaps sir would like them to be harnessed together in that delightful arrangement, that can be most amusing.'

He seemed to be giving the suggestion consideration. 'No, because when I click my fingers they will change partners. Each must service the other three.'

'Will silence be required?'

Again, a pause. 'No, I imagine a certain amount of grunting and slurping will add to the aesthetic value of the spectacle.'

'And your guests will be availing themselves of my merchandise, and taking advantage of them afterwards?'

'That can be negotiated later. Now go.'

'As you wish, sir.' He backed out of the room. The youths stood in a nervous row. The Dark Master indicated the couches, and they pair off. The slight figure crossed to the nearest plinth and sprawled on his back, legs splayed so that his erect penis was standing proud over his stomach, as though hauled into the perpendicular by the counterweight of his heavy testicles lolling lazily between the visible crease beneath. I lick my lips in breathless expectation. The arrogant youth swaggers in at his head, stands over him, directs his large -- but still limp uncut flesh-and-blood pendulum effortlessly down into his mouth, something I got the impression he'd done many times before, and leans forward, slithering it deep into the receptive throat. A catch in my breath as I watch him taking it down, a quick guilty jealousy that it was not me. But already he was slumping down, angling the slighter youth's cock up into his own mouth, locking them together into a single fused formation of limbs and bodies. Across the room the Nubian was laid across the other boy, and they were already reciprocating. With a deep gurgling sound and lazy breathing all that we could hear.

At a signal the would-be libertines began to file in, some twelve of them, taking their places at the table-side, with some pointing, sniggering and guffawing at the spectacle the Dark Master had preconceived for their perverse titillation, a smattering of applause in recognition of the originality of the tableau. The guests had assumed aliases of their own devising, according to their mood or whim, by which they had to be referred. Even when their true identities were guessed, it was considered impolite to profess you had knowledge of them. We were also masked, some in the full Venetian ceramic style, in the form of comic moon-faces, black/white pierrots, or rich fanciful floral designs. Myself, and a few others had adopted the less pretentious highwayman disguise.

There was 'Lord Orchid' in full morning suit, with a masked slender girl known as 'Ophelia' who clung close to him and who's gaze kept straying towards the lusty youths locked together on either side of the dining table, whether from fear or desire I couldn't determine. Four of them were female, including 'Lady Misrule' with her breasts immodestly bared in a rather tasteless manner, who squinted through the lenses of opera glasses to inspect the proceedings. A fat jolly matron with huge jiggling bosoms that seemed to excite some interest. She had styled herself, somewhat ostentatiously in my opinion, 'La Grande Horizontale'. There was also 'Bishop Prick' in full mitre and robes, who sat beside 'Helena Troy', and talked loudly as red wine was served. I forget the guise of others, a 'Judge Yenot' in powdered wig. While I -- for my sins, was 'Thanatos', to reflect the darkness of my soul, and I felt myself fortunate to be so concealed. I harboured no great wish to be a known associate of those who frequented Molly Houses and Bawdy Establishments, despite my curiosity to witness whatever vileness occurred within them.

My interest, I assured myself, was purely by way of sociological research, to broaden my understanding of the weaknesses of human nature. There was much talk in praise of blasphemy, intoxicated speeches on the nature of evil and the attractions of deviancy. Bishop Prick got up and declaimed in stentorian tones a long rambling supposedly satirical poem of his own devising concerning the Pope and the hypocrisy of the church establishment. I was offended less by its scatological content than I was by its inept metre and rhyme-scheme. Instead, I pick distractedly at the banquet which was overcooked and unappetising to my taste, settling instead for a bowl of fruit, rejecting the banana to concentrate on grapes.

At length -- lazily, the Dark Master clicks his fingers and obediently the youths decouple. My attention -- at once, returning to the slight youth who had taken my fancy. His partner had instantly unmouthed his upstanding penis so that it stands redly quivering and wet, although he more slowly extracts his own penis from the deep throat, globs of semen and saliva vomiting up with it as he withdraws inch by inch, I swear there was a audible 'plop' of suction as the glans eventually swings free, leaving a trail of milky liquid up the youth's forehead and sundered lips. Lady Misrule laughed, closely observing through her opera glasses, and the jolly matron pointed as the performers switched, walking from one side of the table to the other, stiff glistening cocks -- all of them now, swaying perkily.

The slight youth barely moved. Lying on his back, breathing heavily as the Nubian approaches him. In all my years of perverse imaginings I'd never dreamed up anything as delightfully lustful as the vision they present as his mouth gapes to receive the newly presented penis. It seems to slither in forever as the Nubian straddles the face, forcing his hips down, dark buttocks visibly clenching to force himself still further, as he more delicately goes down on the youth's straining red cock. For a moment I look away. Things were becoming more eventful. Lord Orchid had raised the hem of the slender masked girl's dress all the way up, to fasten it to the neckline of her gown, revealing her lack of underwear and surprisingly luxurious pubic bush, inviting the nearest gentlemen to insert a wine-moistened finger into her vagina, which they proceed to do with indecent haste. The fat jolly matron's blouse had been unhooked down over her mountainous breasts and the gentlemen on either side of her stood and extracted their stubby little penises which she eagerly engulfed, one in each hand, and massaged them into her darkly prominent nipples to expressions of ecstasy on all three faces.

As I watch I noticed Orchid's slut was working her way down the table towards me, with each diner invited to finger her quim. I didn't relish the prospect of the stink of her juices on my fingers -- as I would surely be expected to. So I use the confusion to stand and wander, as if by accident, to the plinth to observe more closely. The youth's eyes are closed, either from stress or desire, I couldn't tell. His cheeks spattered and messy with drool. The Nubian, not content with penetration, was raising and thrusting his hips to fuck the impaled face trapped beneath him so that the cheeks inflated to the point of maximum penetration with deep choking squelching sounds emerging, the fat dark testicles flailing and bouncing on his forehead.

I was forcibly reminded of the exquisite pain of the humiliation to which I had been subjected during my Boarding Academy years, as a timid, reserved, studious scholar I had become the natural target for furtive misdemeanour of that grubby nature, incidents I was unable to protest or refuse, yet which had done so much to shape my own preferences. And it was all I could do to restrain my desire to reach out and caress what was so close to me.

But I found Lady Misrule standing beside me, her bare rouged nipples aimed at my chest. 'You see young Ophelia, Lord Orchid's girl-child?' she enquired.

Obediently I look across to where yet another gentleman was sliding his lubricated finger into her vagina, the lascivious writhing of her hips indicating that she found his attentions less than unpleasing.

'Some are saying she is his niece. Others that he purchased her at a bawdy house to inflict these vile debaucheries on her. I've also heard that she's been entrusted to him by her mother, as soon as she came legally of age, to educate her in matters sexual prior to a socially advantageous marriage. So she will be well-schooled orally and bum-wise yet remain technically virgo intacta. Isn't that a delightful stratagem?'